Thursday, July 15, 2010

July 14th, 2010

I have come to the conclusion that RIT knows how to travel in style. After we had received our safety goggles we traveled outside to a normal looking bus. Turns out inside this unseemly bus is a limo. The only reason I could see for this is if people wanted to travel around in a sweet interior but not have the problems of vandalism normal limbos may have. We arrived at JML optics not to long afterward and were immediately put on grand tour. Traveling through the factory just as a lens would when it first arrived at the loading docks. It is first cut down to size and then either put on the fast track (which is more costly) or the hand made way. The part that I enjoyed the most was the polishing of the glass. You see after the glass is cut it gets filled with tiny fractures that have to be taken out. So its cut a bit above the size and then polished down to what a normal lens would look like. The little machines that polished were really cool and the lenses had to go through there twice! The end product was a very very see through and shiny lens. There is also a section of the factory dedicated to super duper microscopic accuracy. They even had a temperature controlled room! Then we departed and made our way to lunch which happened to be delicious subs. When we got back I coded some videos (actually finished up one and then finished another) and went over to help out Nate who was working on heat maps. Nate and I migrated outside and helped two girls from boot camp who needed test subjects. Then everyone played volleyball to finish up a very eventful day.